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Former OpenAI researcher Sushir Balaji, 26, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in recent weeks, CNBC has confirmed.
Balaji left OpenAI earlier this year and publicly raised concerns that the company had violated US copyright law while developing the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
“The manner of death has been determined to be suicide,” David Serrano Sewell, executive director of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in San Francisco, told CNBC in an email on Friday. He said Balaji's next of kin have been notified.
On the afternoon of Nov. 26, officers were called to an apartment on Buchanan Street for a “wellness check,” the San Francisco Police Department said in an email. The department said it found an adult male deceased, and discovered “no evidence of foul play” in its initial investigation.
News of Balaji's death was first reported by the San Jose Mercury News. A family member contacted by the newspaper asked for privacy.
In October, The New York Times published a story about Balaji's concerns.
“If you believe what I believe, you should leave the company,” Balaji told the newspaper. He reportedly believed that ChatGPT and other chatbots like it would destroy the commercial viability of the people and organizations that created the data and digital content now widely used to train artificial intelligence systems.
An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Balaji's death.
“We were devastated to learn this extremely sad news today, and our thoughts are with Sucher’s loved ones during this difficult time,” the spokesperson said in an email.
OpenAI is currently embroiled in legal disputes with a number of publishers, authors, and artists over the alleged use of copyrighted material for AI training data. A lawsuit filed by the media last December seeks to hold OpenAI and major backer Microsoft liable for billions of dollars in damages.
“We actually don't need to train on their data,” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said at a Bloomberg event in Davos earlier this year. “I think that's something people don't understand. Any given training source, it doesn't move the needle for us very much.”
If you are having suicidal thoughts, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on 988 for support and help from a trained counsellor.
— CNBC's Hayden Field contributed reporting.
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